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I don't know if the curriculum has changed, but when I got my Philosophy degree form Princeton in '92, there was an enormous grounding in formal logic, and not

I don't know if the curriculum has changed, but when I got my Philosophy degree form Princeton in '92, there was an enormous grounding in formal logic, and not nearly so much grounding in bullshitting as in some other liberal arts degrees. At the risk of offending people, at the time, the best departments to learn bullshitting were the deparments that weren't actually philosophy, but were grounded in 20th century continental philosophy (a.k.a. "critical theory") such as English and anthropology.

dataangel 19y ago
I know you can only comment on your experience at your own school, but just so nobody generalizes: I've taken many English courses at my college, several of which incorporated critical theory, and wouldn't describe them as bullshit at all. Equating critical theory with bullshit is probably a common pitfall for students and professors alike though; like philosophy more generally, critical theory does a lot of telling you how little you know, without necessarily giving you a new means to know. In my personal experience, writing off critical theory or postmodernism as bullshit is usually due to frustration with the complexity rather than a reasoned critique, but it's up to the individual to judge their own motives.
- wanorris 19y ago
  There are some merits in 20th century continental philosophy (Foucault, Derrida, Habermas, et alia), and some of the derivative works that circulate as critical theory have merit as well. But most of what circulates in the critical theory world (or at least what circulated as of 15 years ago) is deliberately obfuscatory and has virtually no value. It seemed to be an endemic issue that by treating truth value and value judgements as fundamentally problematic, the tools for distinguishing valuable work from useless nonsense got thrown out as well. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of crap in every academic field, but at least in most fields, sensible practitioners left themselves the traditional tools for identifying the crap and forming a consensus about what was valuable.

dataangel 19y ago

I know you can only comment on your experience at your own school, but just so nobody generalizes: I've taken many English courses at my college, several of which incorporated critical theory, and wouldn't describe them as bullshit at all. Equating critical theory with bullshit is probably a common pitfall for students and professors alike though; like philosophy more generally, critical theory does a lot of telling you how little you know, without necessarily giving you a new means to know. In my personal experience, writing off critical theory or postmodernism as bullshit is usually due to frustration with the complexity rather than a reasoned critique, but it's up to the individual to judge their own motives.

wanorris 19y ago
There are some merits in 20th century continental philosophy (Foucault, Derrida, Habermas, et alia), and some of the derivative works that circulate as critical theory have merit as well. But most of what circulates in the critical theory world (or at least what circulated as of 15 years ago) is deliberately obfuscatory and has virtually no value. It seemed to be an endemic issue that by treating truth value and value judgements as fundamentally problematic, the tools for distinguishing valuable work from useless nonsense got thrown out as well. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of crap in every academic field, but at least in most fields, sensible practitioners left themselves the traditional tools for identifying the crap and forming a consensus about what was valuable.